Aircraft flight tracking services recorded the flight of a Chinese drone near Hainan Island, which broadcast the onboard identifier of a Typhoon fighter jet of the Royal Air Force of Great Britain.
This was reported by the UK Defence Journal.
The Flightradar24 service recorded the flight of a Chinese drone near Hainan Island, which posed as a Eurofighter Typhoon ZK334 fighter, call sign YILO2400.
According to the publication, the behavior of the aircraft on the map obviously did not correspond to the flight characteristics of the Eurofighter. The trajectory remained near Chinese airspace and eventually ended on Hainan Island.
The Chinese drone maintained speeds and echelons more typical of a mid-altitude reconnaissance or surveillance UAV than a high-speed fighter. The route looped around a sector of airspace frequently used by the Chinese Air Force, before shifting to an area likely to be a drone base.
Flightradar24 relies on data from a distributed network of volunteer receivers. In this case, the signals were stable enough for the track to remain visible for a long time and show a coherent, logical picture of movement.
The use of the UK Air Force identification code is not technically difficult in itself. The ADS-B system has no means of authentication, so any aircraft with a transponder that allows manual data entry can broadcast an identity that actually belongs to a completely different aircraft.
The publication emphasizes that aviation researchers have been paying attention to this technical ‘feature’ for many years, but the intention behind the choice of this particular code remains unclear. This could be a deliberate attempt to test identity manipulation, a misconfigured drone transponder during testing, or a sign that China is experimenting with methods to mask the identity of its UAVs during training flights.
